BUBBY DACER

Here are the letters of Bubby Dacer.

They give you an idea of the man.

My impression reading the letters: Bubby Dacer is first rate sipsip at intrigero, and, boy,  how he loves playing the role.

THE GREAT RECESSION

The Great Recession in pictures.

ON DACER-CORBITO MURDER CASE

I am borrowing part of a post from Fraus Latet.  Got the link here.

Essentially it asserts, if there is murder, there must be a dead body or remains of a dead body.  Very commonsensical, right?  Burned beyond total recog?  You gotta be kidding: it ain’t easy burning a man,  more so beyond total recognition.

… there is the fixation on testimonial evidence in the Dacer-Corbito case, with regard to testimonies of Alex Dilloy et al, and the striptease affidavit of the current centerfold, Cezar Ochoco Mancao.

Forgotten in the mire of he said/they said, is the physical evidence, or the lack of it. The physical evidence consists of a few bones, which have tested negative for human DNA. Did Dacer have bulalo for dinner? Maybe, but where are his remains?

The line being peddled is that the flesh and bones have been burned beyond recognition, like ashes from a crematorium. This, the prosecution gathers, from the testimony of the Alex Dilloy y Buladas (note Buladas) that after strangulation, the bodies were placed on top of a file (sic – pile) of wood and some old tires and lit with gasoline (Direct Examination, Alex Dilloy, page 43 and 44, June 14, 2007).

The people of India, who have cremated their dead with firewood for centuries, are the experts on this matter. Their experts state that to burn an adult body completely, in open air, 400 to 600 kilos of firewood, logs, preferably, would be needed (http://www.sustdev.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1969&Itemid=36). For the bodies of both Dacer and Corbito, then, one would need 800 to 1200 kilos. That is one two to tons of firewood (1,760 to 2,640 pounds); that is about as heavy as a Volkswagen beetle.

We need not even go very far. Anybody who has roasted a lechon on a spit will tell you that it takes a lot of wood to properly cook a lechon, so that there won’t be blood on the bones; let alone, char the pig beyond recognition. And if the fire were intense enough to grind the skull to ashes, the same heat should have melted the dental implants found by Dr. Fortun. Miraculously, however, the metal dental plates survived, which is the only means by which the victims were identified. Miraculously, too, one metal dental plate from each “victim”, survived the skull grinding heat (Letter of Raquel Fortun to Dir. Wycoco, April 11, 2001). The search by Dr. Fortun was conducted on April 7, 2001, six months after the bodies were burned on November 24, 2000.

That the firewood gathered in only a few minutes is not sufficient to char a body beyond recognition is proven in the case of People v. Alexio Lupango G.R. No. L-32633 November 12, 1981, “The evidence of the prosecution discloses that the victim, Teresa Vda, de lglesia, was burned in a fire that razed her house..” “The charred body of the victim Mrs. Teresa Vda. de Iglesia was recovered from the burned house and autopsied..”; and the remains were intact enough for the medico-legal to determine that the cause of death was fracture of the skull, prior to burning. In other words, despite the entire house having burned down, the body was not charred beyond recognition, nor were the skull and bones pulverized.

But the clincher for Senator Lacson and his men, ironically, is a case that then Senior Supt. Lacson lost in the Supreme Court.

In the case of Diosdado Jose Allado and Roberto L. Mendoza v. Hon. Roberto C. Diokno, G.R. No. 113630 May 5, 1994, Allado and Mendoza were accused of the heinous crime of kidnapping with murder, on the strength of an extrajudicial confession executed by Escolastico Umbal. Umbal claimed that the victim, Van Twest, was shot in the chest with a baby armalite, stabbed several times, and his cadaver burned into fine ashes using gasoline and rubber tires.

In its decision, the Supreme Court observed: “The Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (headed by Lacson) relies heavily on the sworn statement of Security Guard Umbal who supposedly confessed his participation in the alleged kidnapping and murder of Van Twest. For one, there is serious doubt on Van Twest’s reported death since the corpus delicti has not been established, nor have his remains been recovered. Umbal claims that Van Twest was completely burned into ashes with the use of gasoline and rubber tires from around ten o’clock in the evening to six o’clock the next morning. This is highly improbable, if not ridiculous. A human body cannot be pulverized into ashes by simply burning it with the use of gasoline and rubber tires in an open field. Even crematoria use entirely closed incinerators where the corpse is subjected to intense heat. Thereafter, the remains undergo a process where the bones are completely ground to dust.”

The Supreme Court went further and held that: “To allege then that the body of Van Twest was completely burned to ashes in an open field with the use merely of tires and gasoline is a tale too tall to gulp.”

It is equally a tall too tall to gulp, that with the aid of some stray firewood, old tires, and coconut leaves, the skull and bones of Dacer and Corbito were pulverized. There being no evidence of their remains, or evidence that their bodies were completely destroyed, one cannot maintain a prosecution for murder.

In the case of Allado, the Supreme Court held that the absence of Van Twest’s body renders the case without probable cause. It, therefore, issued a writ of prohibition prohibiting the RTC from further proceedings in the case.

I am wondering if Dacer and Corbito are not in fact somewhere hiding or roaming around with a surgically altered face.

As for Glenn Dumlao recanting, Fraus Latet wonders aloud: what did he recant? I tried to read the three affidavits too and similarly wondered but I thought maybe I just missed it because I was sleepy.

In any case,  Fraus Latet is a lawyer.

THE PHILIPPINES LIES OPPOSITE OF BRAZIL

Antipodes Map

In geography, the antipodes of any place on Earth is its antipodal point; that is, the region on the Earth’s surface which is diametrically opposite to it. Two points which are antipodal to one another are connected by a straight line through the centre of the Earth. Full article at Wikipedia.

I experimented with the Philippines.

Antipodal points take up mostly Brazil,  stretching from down south near its border with Paraguay going up a point east of Manaus, taking a small slice off Bolivia’s eastern side.  Quezon City lies opposite west of a place called Tangara da Serra and east of Parque Nacional Noel Kempff; Laoag City is opposite a point north of Robore; General Santos City, near a place marked Novo Progreso; Puerto Princesa, east of Machadinho D’oeste; and Cebu City, west of Peixoto de Azevedo.

This is fun.

NATURE AT WORK

Footages of phenomenon of nature in accelarated speed make for interesting viewing:

10 Time-lapse Videos of Nature at Work

DANIEL SMITH SHOULD MARRY NICOLE?

I am a sucker for unlikely endings.

If I were a movie writer, I would pirate the story of the Subic rape case, with an unlikely twist toward the end: Nicole and Daniel walking down the aisle.

Now, why can’t I stop myself from giggling…?

Seriously now, the Subic rape case involving Nicole, or Suzette Nicolas, the Filipina “victim”, and Daniel Smith, the US marine corporal “rapist”, is likely going to end in a reversal of conviction now that Nicole has issued an affidavit casting a shadow of doubt in her own previous narration of  her rape.  We’ll be in for some legal acrobatics in the next few days and weeks to give way for Daniel’s freedom but heck,  legal matters make my head ache.   It will surely raise the hackles of nationalists, leftists,  Nicole-was-raped believers and Smith-must-be-skinned-alive crowd but the noise will die down in time because, let’s face it,  a sexual tryst gone wrong is simply not an inspiring reason to go to war.

I would love to see instead Daniel Smith getting out of incarceration and he going after Nicole this time as an honest-to-goodness love-stricken suitor.

Do I hear people snickering or rolling on the floor laughing?

See, I saw the pictures of Nicole and Daniel side by side for the first time on a broadsheet front page yesterday and I thought I saw two people who would make a very lovely couple, people who would look good together holding hands, or together naked making love.  Both good-looking, their faces seem to be congenial in a strange kind of way.  “Bagay”, we would say.  Makes you wonder what it would have been indeed had the circumstances been any different.  In another setting,  it would not be difficult to imagine them as lovers smitten with one another.   The torrid details of their initial encounter– lap dancing, dirty dancing,  kissing,  and all that — to my mind suggested of two individuals with genuine, if raw, attraction for one another,  who if left alone to themselves will burn the sheets and bed in endless hours of sex.  That is why from the start, I thought it couldn’t be rape,— just two lovers caught in a whirlpool of circumstances that went out of control and turned ugly and nasty because ideology suddenly came into the mix from out of nowhere and turned the whole thing into a monstrous spectacle.

It would be a boring love story though were we to write it for the screens without the mix-ups and entanglements as we saw played out in full measure.  The whole drama spreading out into national consciousness then to politics and foreign policy,  from angry throngs converging on the streets for days on end,  to two governments engaged in occasionally tense diplomatic wranglings,  zooming in to some of the most sizzling reality courtroom dramas ever seen in years, to  long acrimonious debates in forum after forum,  plus record-setting tv primetime news in living rooms— you get all that,  sex, shock, awe, drama, and nerve-wracking complications worth a Hollywood super blockbuster and even an Oscar for best story.

So, okay, Daniel baby, follow my script, will ya’, as I have the copyright for this, and you’ll be getting, what, 5%, …LOL…

THE WORLD WIDE WEB IS 20 YEARS OLD

Remembering when the World Wide Web was born

Tim Berners-Lee: the mind behind it all

Little facts from the beginning

Web science is here

ERASERHEADS BY JESSICA ZAFRA

My favorite Pinoy rock band of all time by my favorite writer: The End.

A MATH FORMULA STARTED THE MELTDOWN

A mathematical equation known as Gaussian copula function, formulated by a math wiz, is the cause of the  global economic meltdown that started at Wall Street.   In the hands of profit-oriented financial managers with scarce understanding of the underlying math, an achievement worth a Nobel prize became a recipe for disaster.

The Formula That Killed Wall Street

A ROCKIN’ ROCKING CHAIR

Don’t you just love to have one like  this when time it is to go rocking.

From Street Anatomy.

via Boingboing.

THE WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES ARE POORER!

Bill Gates is back as the world’s richest at $40B, but if it is any consolation for the rest of us, he’s poorer now by $18B.  Warren Buffett, last year’s richest slipped to number 2.  There are less billionaires this year, 793; last year there were 1,125.

Among them, by the way, is a drug lord.

The World’s Billionaires

THE ECONOMIST: LEGALIZE DRUGS

The Economist says:  Prohibition has failed, legalization is the least bad solution.

I agree.

Damn, I’m fucking evil!

NOT A THOUSAND WORDS CAN CAPTURE

Was surfing about, looking for something and chanced upon this picture from economist.com I can’t let go.  Took the liberty to grab image then photoshop…

Somethings you can capture only in a picture, you can’t in a thousand words…

IN MERCY AS IN GLORY…

In Mercy as in Glory…

Shamelessly!

Follow the leader,

Can’t you see…

“Let’s move on, let’s move on”

So you say,

Now you see…

Hi-hi-hi!

Down the line I hear one crying

“So with me, so with me…”

Then, another, and another,  and another…

Endless echo on a chamber

Now I hear myself praying,

God, have mercy,  have mercy

Hu-hu-hu!

Hi-hi-hi!

(Original image stolen from Inquirer.net)